Police officers, judges most corrupt in Nigeria – NBS

Police officers, judges and prosecutors are the most corrupt public officials in Nigeria, the National Bureau of Statistics said in its latest report released yesterday.

The damning report came the same day the United Nations Office for Drug and Crimes (UNODC) released its own corruption report that said Nigeria spent N400bn annually on bribes to public officials.

The 2017 National Corruption Survey said 46.4 per cent of Nigerian citizens have had “bribery contact” with police officers, 33 per cent with prosecutors and 31.5 per cent with Judges/magistrates.

The survey, tagged ‘Corruption in Nigeria - Bribery as Experienced by the Population’ also revealed that custom officers, judges, magistrates and prosecutors were the public officials who received the largest average cash bribes. The NBS estimated the average bribe paid to Custom officers as N88, 587, Judges/magistrates as N18, 576 while Prosecutors received an average of N10, 072 as bribes from Nigerians.

The survey also listed police officers and tax/revenue officers as public officers to whom the highest number of bribes were paid. It said 29.7 per cent of all bribes are paid to police officers upon a direct request before the service is provided.

In the private sector, employees of insurance companies, teachers in private schools and doctors in private hospitals have highest bribe prevalence in Nigeria, the survey revealed.

The survey showed that 6.0 per cent of Nigerians have come in contact with bribe-seeking employees of insurance companies, 5.9 per cent with teachers in private schools and 3.7 per cent with doctors.

The survey said men pay higher bribes to public officials (37.1 per cent) than women (26.6 per cent).

The NBS also found that young Nigerians have the highest prevalence of bribery in the country as 36.4 per cent Nigerian population aged 25 to 34 years are the people with highest bribery prevalence.

Further analysis of the report showed that 37.7 per cent of people with highest prevalence of bribery have attained tertiary education with people earning N100, 000 and above as those with highest prevalence of bribery.

The highest and lowest prevalence of bribery by geographical location and sex showed that 39.5 per cent of the people are urban males while 24.9 per cent are rural women.